Parenthood: The Weak Need Not Apply
by bettercrazythanboring
Summary: Ummm I can't find Mary or Rudolph West in the Young Justice characters. This was unexpected and I'm not sure how to proceed, but know that this is primarily a Mary/Rudy fic with a side of Wally and general West Family Feelings. DC Marriage Week Day 5: Babies.


The moment a little ginger sack of laughter enters their home, nothing ever stays the same.

It's not even a home, really. Just a dinky apartment in downtown Central City with barely one room. Thankfully, the water runs fine and neither has ever seen a cockroach in their entire life, but there's little in the way of comfort.

Rudy doesn't trust the economy, is what's at the core of it.

Sometimes he'd come home with a little trinket for the baby or his wife, some little promise of a better life. Not that this is a particularly bad one, but Mary and Rudy both know they can do better.

For them, "better" means a two-story house with a dusty attic where their kids can play hide-and-seek, a yard covered in soft, green strands of grass, a dog whose muddy footprints drive them both nuts every other day, and a white picket fence to keep the ugliness of the world at bay.

And they'll get it, eventually. They just want to take as little of a loan as possible because, hey, Rudy doesn't trust the economy. (And is right to do so, given what happens nine years later when aliens almost invade and the populace panics, and the Justice League is formed.)

But, for now, their home is a little apartment on the twelfth floor of a pre-war building where the wallpaper has started to peel in the kitchen.

The wooden floor has many dips and crevices from things being dropped on them for decades and the front door is so thin that they don't trust any lock to hold it, so they develop a habit of pushing an empty bookcase in front of it every night before going to bed. They're lulled to sleep every night by a string of sirens rushing by and there's not enough room for all the books they've collected over the years, and so many other little things that sometimes bother them.

But there's family pictures scattered on every level surface and little Wally almost never cries without a good reason, and Mary learns approximately five hundred new recipes in the three years before they can finally afford their dream house…. sans the picket fence.

It's really not that bad.

When Wally turns one and Mary returns to her job, they think long and hard about what to do about a nanny. They can't just let anyone near their only child, they argue. A complex vetting and interviewing process begins and they're never happy with the results, and they have to keep dropping Wally off at his grandparents' house, apologizing every day for the inconvenience yet never making any progress for a permanent nanny.

But then Rudy's sixteen-year-old sister Iris mentions that she's looking for an after-school job to pay off her journalistic aspirations and Wally's already gotten used to her in his stay with her parents and, what do you know, they make it work.

They make it work well into Iris' college life, as a matter of fact. Even more "as a matter of fact", little Wally's first exposure to science comes from watching Iris do her homework. (And helping. A little. Okay, a tiny bit.)

"Wally," Mary says on her son's seventh birthday. "Blow out the candles or I will."

"No, I'm not done making wishes yet!" the boy protests, arms instinctively hugging the cake.

"You only get the one wish, honey, and it's been ten minutes."

"No," he says, lips pouting as they do every time the adults are so _obviously_ wrong. "I get one wish for _myself_ and one wish for everyone else; Aunty Iris said so. All of you," he says, gesturing around the sunny yard where adults have started small talk by now and the kids no longer pay attention. "And those who aren't here. I want to make one for everyone. So _don't rush me, Mom!_"

His eyes tighten as he goes back to looking intently at the cake, his pupils dilating and constricting in the warm light of seven candles.

Another five minutes pass before he blows on them with all the air his lungs would fit and, though no one will never admit it—or even realize it—every single wish he makes that day comes true within the next five decades.

Including the one about a snooty kid who picks on him getting a booger stuck to his nose for a week without anyone telling him. Which happens when the kid is thirty-five.

The day their son gets his first science fair medal, Mary and Rudy watch him sleep well into the middle of the night, sitting by his bed and talking for hours on end. They make a pact to spend more time with him, to see him mature into the brave, smart young man they know he'll be, to never let their marriage deteriorate.

They want this moment to last forever, but if they can't make that happen, then they'll settle for replicating it as often they can.

Mary falls asleep in the rocking chair she used to lull Wally to sleep with—the only piece of furniture they took from their apartment—with her head on Rudy's shoulder, hands linked.

She makes it a habit to have family breakfast every day—as opposed to Wally grabbing the first thing he can find and running to school with hot toast still between his teeth as he scrambles to pull his open button-down shirt over his backpack somehow. And Rudy skipping breakfast altogether.

Rudy makes it a habit to clock out of work at precisely five-thirty and come home right away. He never runs out of kisses to press to his wife's cheek or foot rubs to give her after a long day of work.

Wally makes it a habit to ignore the weird sounds sometimes coming from his parent's room. In time, he recognizes the warning signs of them and promptly goes outside to do his homework in the yard, under the cover of trees and populated by squirrels he makes friends with.

Together, they coexist fairly peacefully—all those exposes about kids who don't confide in their parents and fight five times a day never find ears that would relate—and Mary and Rudy, hands linked at Iris' wedding, think they've gotten everything they ever wanted.

Until the "accident" happens.

She cries for days, looking at her little Wally in a hospital bed, unresponsive for but a few shallow breaths a minute. Rudy tries to stay strong, to be a rock for her, but, inside, he's crumbling. They never leave Wally's side, but don't talk either, staying still as statues, barely daring to breathe for fear of missing some sign of him getting better.

Rudy's new brother-in-law comes one day by with a bunch of pots filled with food he and Iris made together, and, after talking for half an hour about the situation, Barry sees the state of the backyard. Where the experiment happened.

He gulps as he recognizes the setting, heart falling through his veins and landing somewhere in his heels, and it makes every step heavy and painful as he heads home to tell his wife about the nature of what Wally was attempting to do.

Mary slaps the blond man when she finds out his secret identity the next day and the ideas his notes gave Wally because, dammit, he's her _son_ and he's in a _coma_, and he's just _thirteen_; he didn't know what he was _doing_! How dare Barry encourage such behavior!

There's a reason pill bottles have childproof caps on them, she yells as she kicks Barry out of the hospital room—literally knocks her foot into his ass—and locks the door behind him, resting her forehead against the metal and weeping quietly.

When she finally turns around, she sees her husband sitting abandoned in an uncomfortable chair, fingers locked between his knees, staring at his only son with silent tears streaming down his cheeks. He glances at her, having felt her gaze, and they stumble into each other's arms, holding each other at the edge of a cliff by a mere strand of hair.

Just one more moment and it will snap, and they will fall.

But then Wally wakes, smiles up at his parents with glazed, glassy eyes, and asks if they have anything to eat.

And, in time, everything becomes okay again.

It's certainly an adjustment, though.

For one, this household now spends three times as much money on food than it did before. Mary digs out the old recipes she learned while they were saving up for the house and tries to mitigate the damage a little, but even so it takes a heck of a lot to keep Wally fed these days.

He feels bad about that and tries to get a weekend job to help pay for his food some, but his parents assure him that they can handle it and to focus on whatever childhood he has left.

On the plus side, they never have to throw any food out again. Like, ever. They can barely recall a time when anything came within a week of its expiration date.

For another, Wally cuts his extracurricular science classes at school to have more time to train with Uncle Barry. He's given himself superpowers, he says with a laugh when they protest. What else could he possibly learn in eighth grade chemistry that he doesn't already know or couldn't find out from The Flash? Who _also_ gave himself superpowers? Really, it's a match made in heaven.

Mary exchanges some very firm words with her brother-in-law at that and sets strict guidelines for this partnership, promising hell if even one of them is violated. Rudy just gets drunk, stumbles to Iris' house and asks her, leaning against the doorway, how she handles knowing that her husband is out there every day, getting into near-death situations.

Nothing they do, nothing they distract themselves with, no calm words from either speedster—or the Garricks, whom they've just met and have become family friends with overnight—will calm their hearts and, eventually, the worry becomes just a part of who they both are.

Oh, they make jokes and ask about Wally's day, and his smile makes everything light up in Mary's heart, but then she heads upstairs with her husband, curls against his side as he reads some book or other before bed, and slowly lets the sleepy haze take her under, unease and fear of what the next day might bring always coating it.

The day she fears takes eight years to arrive.

Years during which she watches her son gain friends like he never has before, learn confidence that's not an act, stand up to his bullies without his powers, become a mature and responsible adult.

Watches the freckles on his face and back breed like bunnies, until there's barely any pale skin left, the dots matching the fiery red of his hair. Watches them all drop off the face of his body as suddenly as they appeared a little while later.

Years during which the diplomas and medals pile up in their living room and his Stanford acceptance letter sits framed on the wall right opposite the front door, and Rudy tells anyone who'll listen that his son's a certified genius.

Years during which she starts to hear about someone named Artemis more and more until one day he comes home with a blond girl in tow, her teeth gritting and cheeks flaming as he introduces her to his parents and quickly drags her into the backyard before Mary can even comprehend the fact that her son apparently has a girlfriend now.

Until he comes home from college one weekend and mentions looking for an apartment for two just outside of campus next year right in between taking a giant bite out of a watermelon and asking his dad to pass the sugar with a grimace.

Until he calls her at 2 AM one night and starts talking about the most irrelevant things—the mileage on her car, the population of Bialya, the ingredients of twinkies—before casually slipping in a question about her engagement ring and what she would've liked even better.

Years during which she thought she could stop worrying. She chants his words to her at least half a dozen times a month—_"Artemis and I are retiring, Mom."_—when her hard-grained instincts get the better of her and she has to restrain an urge to call Wally to make sure he's still alive.

The number becomes less and less over time and she's sleeping soundly the night a quiet knock on their door wakes Mary and Rudy up. The night Artemis stands out on the porch, clutching her upper arms to hold herself together, tears and despair in her eyes. The night Mary just _knows_.

It hasn't even been eighteen months, is all she can think as her mind blanks and shoulders slump. She couldn't even have peace of mind for _eighteen months_.

* * *

She takes a few weeks off work when it happens. She sits at home, clutching an old sweatshirt that he never used to wash in her hands, and stares into the distance.

She looks in the mirror and all she sees is Wally's eyes, Wally's hair. She looks at her husband and all she sees is Wally's mouth, Wally's ears. She looks at photo albums and all she sees is injustice.

But she feels nothing.

Rudy takes care of all the arrangements. There aren't many because their son's body was never recovered—they don't even have a _body_—but there's a wake regardless and the man keeps himself frantically busy with details and plans to avoid thinking about it because if he does, he'll break down.

They don't speak to each other for days at a time, it seems. The bed they share becomes cold, the dog they got when Wally moved out has given up on trying to make them livelier by playing with him, and weeks pass without either really noticing. And still the question remains.

How do they go on this time?

* * *

It's Artemis who's on the other end when Mary picks up the phone a quarter of a year later.

"Wally's alive," she rasps, breathing quickly and voice shaking. "He's alive and he's right here, right next to me, and I don't think he can talk right now, but he's alive and he's okay, and _he's alive_, Mary." Her voice breaks on the last word and she sniffs.

All Mary's heard is "Wally's alive" and the phone clanks on the floor as everything she's closed herself off to comes rushing back through her veins and she falls to her knees with the overwhelming force of life slamming back into her.

Rudy hears the crashes and rushes over from the kitchen to make sure she's not having a heart attack, but he's greeted by a wordless teary smile and he just _knows_.

He falls with her and they stay on the floor—crying—for hours until their dog makes enough noise to wake up the whole neighborhood and they have no choice but to pay attention to it.

* * *

Their twenty-third anniversary goes over with mixed results.

They've taken the occasion to celebrate with family and friends at a nice restaurant in a private corner, sharing stories and daring to be happy for the first time in a long time, when all of a sudden this guy with a mask comes in and holds Wally at gunpoint, demanding cash.

Mary gets a glint in her eye and stomps over to this person to punch them, rip their mask off, read him a lecture, and then proceeds to call his mother.

Ain't _nobody_ touching her suddenly-alive baby.

She dusts off her hands after grabbing the burglar by the collar and dragging him outside, and elegantly strolls back over to her husband to kiss him full on the mouth.

"I could've taken him, Mom," Wally says. "Come on; he was holding the gun wrong."

"Tonight, you rest and you eat," she directs in a tone that accepts no objections.

* * *

Mary and Rudy take a second honeymoon on their twenty-fifth anniversary to try and recapture the magic that drove them together in the first place.

This honeymoon lasts three months and takes place all over the world—from Spain to Cabo, to Vlatava, to South Rhelasia, to places they can't even really spell. (They've come into a small fortune now that they no longer have to feed Wally.)

They lounge in sunny beaches and take long camel rides, and waste some days doing perfectly nothing except maybe a picnic in the green grass of Europe, and, slowly, the color begins to seep into their lives again.

Their life, really. Singular.

When the call comes that Wally's engaged, they spend a good two hours interrogating him and Artemis about everything, and then another three getting drunk and celebrating how old they've gotten by testing how much their bodies are still capable of in the tangled sheets of their hotel room.

* * *

On his wedding day, they watch the happy couple dance, laugh, and a few other things—including something that looks suspiciously like crime-fighting—and wipe a few tears at the sight. When they waltz together after dancing with Wally and Artemis, close as ever, Rudy whispers to her.

"We did a good job with that one."

* * *

**A/N**: This is part of my DC Marriage Week prompt series, which all share the same continuity (and yes, the wedding will be elaborated upon). Check out my profile for details.


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